



'liKSKNTlCD HY 



THESIS FOR THE DOCTORATE 



WILLIAM BLAKE'S ANTICIPATION 

OF THE INDIVIDUALISTIC 

REVOLUTION 




THIS THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE GRADUATE 

SCHOOL OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL 

FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY 

KATE L. DICKINSON 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Place of Individualism Prior to Blake. 

A. The Ancient World — Self in the State. 

a. Harmony of macrocosm and microcosm. 

b. Subsumption of the individual under the political 

state. 

B. Christianity — The Soul and the Church. 

/a. Negation of the world. 

b. Value of the individual — as a soul. 

c. St. Augustine's attempt at philosophical individ- 

ualism. 

d. Result is the dignity but not the joy of life. 

e. Rise of fundamental oppositions : 

1. Soul and World, 

2. Universal and individual. 

3. Intellect and Will. 

C. Modernity : 

a. Continuation in the rise of oppositions — with 

Descartes. 

1. Body and Mind. 

b. With Locke: 

1. Innate ideas and sensation. 

c. With Grotius — jus and lex. Natural rights. 

d. With Hobbes : Status naturales and status civils. 

Egoism and Relativism and empiricism. 
1. The Struggle for Rationality, 

a. Cudworth and Clarke — eternal and 

immutable morality. 

b. Butler — "Cool self-love." 

c. Price — rectitude. 

d. Result — theory eternal moral law. 

e. Empiricists and Rationalists compared. 



2. The Struggle for Sociality. 

a. Cumberland — the benevolent impulses. 

b. Shaftesbury — harmony. 

c. Hutcheson — the moral sense. 

d. Smith — sympathy. 

Result — the theory of a moral sense as 
the basis of morality. 

II. Blake's Revolt: 

A. His Struggle Against Rationalism. 

1. Energism. 

2. Irrationalism. 

3. Comparison with irrationalism of Stirner, Emer- 

son, Ibsen. 

B. Blake's Struggle Against Moralism. 

1. Energism the basis. 

2. His immoralism. 

3. Comparison with immoralism of Stirner, Emerson, 

Ibsen, Wagner, Nietszche. 

C. Blake's Struggle for Individualism 

1. Energism the basis. 

2. His individualism. 

a. Its sanity, its breadth, its coherence, its in- 
clusion of humanity, its intellectualism. 

3. Comparison with individualism of Stirner, Emer- 

son, Ibsen, Nietszche. 
Conclusion — Summary. 



THE ANCIENT WORLD: SELF IN 
STATE. 

Individualism in practice is as old as Life it- 
self ; but individualism in theory is essentially a 
product of modern thought. Indeed, until cer- 
tain other problems had been raised, and certain 
distinctions made, a conscious theory of individu- 
alism w^as impossible. It has ever been sporadic, 
rather than continuous in its development, each 
exponent of the theory seeming to arrive at his 
conclusions independently, instead of criticising 
and synthesizing or transcending previous views. 
Its exponents ever tend to swing the pendulum 
too far to one side, thus thought is affected too 
greatly by temperament, but individualism has a 
very real value for life as well as for philosophy. 
While, in its extreme form it fails to be practi- 
cal, it is nevertheless a strong, wholesome cor- 
rective of too great sociality, in which the indi- 
vidual is lost in the mass. As long, however, as 
the self was only part of a political state, or a 
heavenly "City of God" no philosophy of the self 
could possibly arise even from those who were 
strong individualists. 

This subsumption of the self in a political 
state is characteristic of Greek philosophy. 
Throughout its course we find no sense of con- 
flict between Man and the world, no diremption 
of thought and thing, no separation of self 
and society. All is harmony. Man is a mi- 
crocosm : the world is a macrocosm, and is 
Man writ large. Whether, as with the Milesian 
school, the philosopher's attention is directed 
toward the world, or whether, as with the soph- 
ists and the three great Greek thinkers, the atten- 
tion is directed toward Man, the result is the 



Place of 
Individualism 



Self in the State in 
Greek Thought 



same. There is never a suggestion of discord ; 
the passage from thought to thing, and from 
thing to thought, is natural and unquestioned. In 
all this harmony, however, the self is lost ; Man 
is a part of the world and is subsumed under the 
category of Being. Even where the Stoics intro- 
duced such modern ideas as world-citizenship 
and humanity they still left the self a micro- 
scopic counterpart of the world. 



Rise of Fundamental 
Oppositions 



CHRISTIANITY— THE SOUL AND THE 
CHURCH. 

The rise of Christianity bringing into the Pa- 
gan world the idea of the negagtion of the v/orld 
for the sake of the soul, led the way toward the 
modern world of contradictions. The value 
placed by Christianity upon the soul gives the 
first suggestion of a philosophic basis for indi- 
vidualism. St. Augustine, like the later Descartes, 
worked through doubt. To doubt is to think ; to 
think implies a subject and an object, and these 
functions of consciousness are united in a uni- 
tary personality of the soul. This idea of the 
unitary personality of the soul is an attempt at 
philosophical individualism, as is St. Augustine's 
emphasis on the Will as the core of personality. 
But this idea of the self as a soul is partial. It 
cannot include the joy, the value, the happiness 
of life ; it considers only its austere dignity. Man 
is not spirit only, hence the soul cannot satisfy 
all the demands of Life. 

In St. Augustiwe's idea of the soul as a per- 
sonality an advance was made. When the med- 
ieval, religious votaries renounced the world 
for the salvation of the individual soul they pre- 
pared the way for modern individualism. Not 



the value of the world only, but the worth of 
human life began to count, and so, throughout 
medieval thought arose gradually the contradic- 
tions that form so large a portion of modern 
thought. First were separated the soul and the 
world ; then, later, with Realism and Nominalism 
we have the opposition of the universal and the 
individual. The individualism of the Nominal- 
ists, however, is verbal rather than substantial, 
concerned rather with forms of thought, than 
with realities of Life. Intellect and Will we find 
opposed sharply in the conflict between Aquinas 
and Duns Scotus, opposed without any notion of 
their fundamental connection. Duty and free- 
dom, good and bad, inner and outer, arise as 
opposed pairs until by the time of Descartes we 
have, as it were, two worlds ; a sharp dualism in 
each department of Life, and each world seem- 
ingly separated as far asunder as the poles — 
further, indeed, for there seemed no possibility 
of connection between them. 

DESCARTES: MIND AND BODY. 

When Descartes, following the same argument 
as had his predecessor, St. Augustine, developed 
his famous "cogito ergo sum," and divided the 
res cogitans from the res extensa, he gave to 
modern thought still another contradiction, the 
dualism of mind and body, and materialist and 
rationalist, occasionalist and vitalist have ever 
since been wrestling with the problem. During 
the first period of modern philosophy when the 
attention was first turned towards nature, Man 
was more or less neglected ; but this neglect was 
very different from the identification of man 
and nature in ancient philosophy. The contra- 



dictions were present during the modern period 
but one side only was emphasized. 

Jus Naturale The development of natural rights turned at- 

Grotius tention to man's place in society. Of this Des- 

cartes had taken little or no account. Yet, until 
it was recognized that Man was made not only 
to obey the laws of society, but to insist upon his 
rights as a human being, until then, no real de- 
velopment of either individualism or of socialism 
was possible. The first philosopher to develop 
this idea of jus naturale was Hugo Grotius, 
whose social philosophy gave to man egoistic and 
benevolent impulses, rights as well as duties, 
society as well as self. His benevolent optimism 
saved him from portraying a state such as Hob- 
bes showed in his status naturalis; while his 
social and nationalistic attitude prevented his as- 
suming an egoistic, individualistic attitude. 

Hobbes Now that Man is found to be endowed with 

rights as well as bound by laws, it is possible for 
Hobbes to come forward and to insist upon these 
"inalienable rights" as the primary facts of life 
and to make law secondary and unnatural even 
while necessary. Thus we find Hobbes purely 
materialistic. "Every part of the universe is 
body and that which is not body is no part of 
the universe.'" Even man's conduct is a purely 
relative afifair. The ego is empirical, a merely 

Status Naturalis and animal ego life the self of Peer Gynt. Man, in 

c, , ^. .,. the status naturalis lives in a state of war, "and 

Status Civihs . ,,2 

such war as is of every man agamst every man, 

each seeking his own rights to the exclusion of 
the rights of others. This state, while natural, 
could not continue, and so from the status natu- 
ralis, man emerged into the status ciinlis by 
means of a social contract, each giving up some- 



^ Hobbes, "Leviathan." p. 844. 

^ Hobbes, "Leviathan," p. 64, Lat. ed. Tr. 



thing in order to keep the remainder. A state 
of law is thus not natural but necessary. 

It will be seen that this empiricism, this crass 
egoism of Hobbes, while it recognizes the gulf 
between self and society, and between rights and 
law, does not bridge the gulf, and, indeed leaves 
no room whatever for a real self. The merely 
empirical "Me" which he discusses is not a self 
at all. The contrast between rights and law, 
however, is now a permanent and abiding con- 
trast for thought. 

With the problems of jus and lex, of ego and 
society, of mind and body, at hand, there arose 
the problem of knowledge, when Locke raised 
the question as to how our knowledge is to be 
ob\tained. This turned the attention of philoso- 
phy from the outer to the inner world, from mat- 
ter to mind, but in the effort to deduce all phe- 
nomena from necessary, rational grounds, the 
philosopher of the Enlightenment failed to de- 
velop an idea of selfhood that was more than 
empirical. They could defend or oppose the 
Hobbist Ego, but they could not transcend it. 

During the remainder of the century English Reaction 
philosophy consisted, for the most part, in fact 
almost entirely, of the refutation of the theories 
set forth in the Leviathan. This great reaction 
against Hobbes divided into two separate attacks, 
one directed against his egoism, the other against 
his relativism. These took the form of two great 
struggles ; the first a struggle for rationality, the 
second a struggle for sociality. Both were op- 
posed to the struggle for individuality. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR RATIONALITY. 

Against the relativity of Hobbes there arose in 
the search for rationality the school that upheld Cudworth and Clark 



10. 



Butler and Cool 
Self-love 



"eternal and immutable morality." Foremost 
among them stand Cudworth and Clark, extreme 
Thomists, insisting on the dignity of the moral 
law and utterly neglecting any of its practical 
utilitarian, relative aspects. Cudworth maintained 
that Good is good always and forever, just as 
black is black and white is white. Things are 
alike because they have the nature of likeness, 
and "Omnipotent Will cannot make Things Like 
or Equal to one another, without the Natures of 
Likeness and Equality.'" In this stern moralism 
man is regarded not as a member of society pri- 
marily but as a moral agent under strict obliga- 
tion to perform virtuous deeds. He takes ac- 
count of one aspect only of man's nature and just 
so far his system lacks breadth and scope. Clarke, 
whose system deduced from mathematical instead 
of geometrical laws, is almost the same, is like- 
wise wanting in completeness ; both try to make 
the good, rational, and evil, irrational and ab- 
surd. 

Butler, who continued this line of thought, em- 
phasizes not so much the nationality and logical 
necessity of the obligation to the good, as the 
power and reasonableness of conscience in the 
control of the soul. Butler, had he been con- 
cerned less with the salvation of the soul and 
more with Man's position in the world, might 
have anticipated Blake, but his "cool, reasonable 
self-love"" is too abstract to be termed individual- 
ism. Nevertheless, he does stand against that 
form of altruism which, benevolent toward oth- 
ers, neglects the ego. While connecting public 
and private welfare, Butler considered that pub- 
lic welfare was often emphasized at the expense 
of private welfare. Though he thinks conscience 

' Cudworth, "A Treatise Concerning Eternal and 
Immutable Morality." Chap. II., p 15. 
' Butler, Sermons III., p 39. 



11. 



ought absolutely to "govern the world.'" still he 
says that "men in fact as much and as often con- 
tradict that part of their nature which respects 
self, and which leads them to their own private 
good and happiness, as they contradict that part 
of it which respects society and tends to public 
good.'" But by this Butler seems to mean that 
people neglect the salvation of the soul for the 
material good of others. Thus the "cool self- 
love" that P.utler advocates is only care for the 
soul, not at all a true individualism such as 
that which Blake will later preach. 

In the realm of pure ethics it is Richard Price 
who continues the struggle for rationality. The 
first to use the term intuition, he also makes a 
step forward by connecting his idea of rectitude 
with volition, though he does this only in a theo- 
retical manner. The central idea of his ethics 
is intellectual and not volitional, as is Blake's 
view. Unlike Blake's view also is his limited, 
partial view of man, which regards him as an 
ethical animal rather than as a human being. 

These opponents of the relativism of the 
Hobbist philosophy are all of them complete ra- 
tionalists. Not experience, but reason, is the 
standard to which appeal must be made; not the 
a posteriori, but the a priori, necessary laws of 
the mind must determine the moral and intellec- 
tual laws. Hobbes looking at actual life and ex- 
perience is pessimistic as well as relative, but the 
rationalists looking at the eternal, necessary laws, 
see no reason for anything but complete optim- 
ism. Unfortunately, their optimism is due to the 
unconquerable desire of the eighteenth century 
to find necessary rational grounds for all things, 



Price. Rectitude 
Connected with 
Volition 



Rationalists and 
Empiricists 



* Butler, Sermons II., p. 42. 
^ Butler, Sermons II., p 21. 



12. 



Cumberland 
Benevolence 



Shaftesbury 



and to disregard the natural human instincts and 
needs of the individual. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIABILITY. 

Not only was the relativism of Hobbes op- 
posed in a struggle for rationality, but his egoism 
was also opposed in a great struggle for social- 
ity. The first to attack the egoism of Hobbes 
was Cumberland, who in 1672 published his 
Treatise of the Laws of Nature, in which he es- 
tablished a theory of benevolence as natural to 
men and their proper aim. He says in part, 
"the greatest benevolence of every rational 
agent toward all, constitutes the happiest state 
of all in general, and of each in particular, as 
far as is in their power to procure it, and is 
necessarily requisite in order to attain the hap- 
piest state to which they can aspire ; and there- 
fore the common good of all is the supreme 
law."* 

This benevolence is directly opposed to the self- 
ish egoism of the Hobbist philosophy and neg- 
lects the anti-social impulses of man, as Hobbes 
had neglected the social impulses. 

Shaftesbury, who also attacked the egoism of 
Hobbes, established as an ideal an almost pagan 
idea of harmony. The different elements in man's 
nature must be in accord and in proportion. 
He states that, "No one can be vicious or ill ex- 
cept either : 

1. By the deficiency or weakness of natural af- 
fections. 

2. By the violence of the selfish. 

3. By such as are plainly unnatural."" 

"Thus the wisdom of what rules, and is first 



' Cumberland, "Laws of Nature," p. 41. 
" Shaftesbury, "An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and 
Merit." Bk. II., p. 112. 



ContragJ S h a f t e s- 
bury and Cumber- 



13. 
and chief in nature has made it to be according 
to the private interest and good of every one to 
work toward the general good which, if a crea- 
ture ceases to promote, he is actually so far want- 
ing to himself, and ceases to promote his own 
happiness and welfare.' 

Shaftesbury thus makes the public and pri 
vate interests inseparable, seeking the golden i^^^ 
mean between them and condemning an excess 
of either. Furthermore, since he makes man 
part of a system and makes virtue or vice de- 
pend on man's place in this system, society is just 
as much an instinct as egoism ? He bases his 
system on sociality, whereas Cumberland found 
benevolence to be an ideal not to be completely 
realized in an imperfect society. Where Cum- 
berland found it difficult to place man in society, 
Shaftesbury finds man already there, and places 
his happiness in the balance of the social and 
anti-social instincts. 

Opposed to these philosophers, and standing on n,jan(3eville Repudi- 
the side of egoism, but at a much lower level ation of Good, but 
than Hobbes, we find Mandeville, who makes of Not of Standard 
virtue merely a device of the ruling class much Good 
in the same manner as that in which Nietszche 
later developed his theory. He says, "The law- 
yers and other wise men that have labored for 
the establishment of society have endeavored to 
make the people they were to govern believe that 
it was more beneficient for everybody to conquer 
than to indulge his appetites, and much better to 
mind the public that what seemed his private in- 
terests."' It was their interest "to preach up 
public-spiritedness, that they might reap the 



^Shaftesbury, "An Inquiry Concerning- Virtue and 
Merit." Bk. II.. p. 114. 
■ :\:'andeville, "The Fable of the Bees," Vol. 1, p. 28. 



Hutcheson the Mor 
al Sense 



14. 

fruits of the labor and self-denial of others.'" 

Startling as this may sound, Mandeville, while 
repudiating the pursuit of goodness, does not re- 
pudiate the moral law. Good is still good. The 
standard for him remains unchanged, even 
though he may rebel against it. 

Apart from this development of English phi- 
losophy through the defense of or the opposi- 
tion to either the egoism or the relativism of 
Hobbes, there had developed also empiricism 
with Locke (1632-1704), who believed all know- 
ledge to come from the senses, and also the 
school of Natural Philosophy led by Newton, 
which laid emphasis on external facts. 

Opposed to Hobbes and to Mandeville in this 
struggle for sociality was Francis Hutcheson, 
who supported the claim of Shaftesbury that 
public and private interest are inseparable, but 
supported it upon a totally different basis. 
Hutcheson is not in any way cheaply altruistic, 
but bases his theory upon the oneness of hu- 
manity. He does not consistently develop this 
idea, but it is there. He claims "that the author 
of nature has given us a moral sense to direct 
our actions and to give us still nobler pleasures, 
so that while we are only intending the good of 
others, we undesignedly promote our own great- 
est private good."" By this moral sense we in- 
stinctively approve the good, and dispute the 
evil. Hutcheson thus disputes the egoism of 
Hobbes, while avoiding the theory of eternal and 
immutable morality. Where Shaftesbury had 
Hutcheson's Idea of made of men a society, a system, in which each 
Humanity must be related to all, as the part to the whole, 

the instinctive approval of the good which 



* Ibid, p. 34. 

" Hutcheson, "Concerning Good and Evil.'' Section 

1, VIII., p. 116. 



15. 



Adam Smith 



Hutcheson emphasizes is due to a sense of the 
unity of humanity. We cannot say "What's 
Hecuba to us or we to Hecuba?" without realiz- 
ing that all mankind is indissolubly united, and 
that our approval or disapproval of actions de- 
pends upon this, and not upon self-interest. In 
fact, it is essentially immediate and disinterested. 
This is an idea far above the usual idea of man- 
kind current in the eighteenth century. In its 
scope, it approaches more nearly to the breadth 
of Blake's conception of humanity. 

The theory of a moral sense which should pro- 
duce approval and disapproval was further de- 
veloped by Adam Smith. Conceiving the idea 
that this moral sense must have an origin, he 
finds that origin in sympathy. Hutcheson had 
said that we are all one. As this is so, we can 
put ourselves in the other person's place men- 
tally and feel as he feels. Right action will then 
arouse approval. Little of the ordinary distinc- 
tions between egoism and altruism remain here. 
Evolving from sympathy we have the sense of 
merit or demerit which determines the justice of 
our approval and disapproval. 

Sympathy, is thus the keynote in our judg- 
ment of the actions of others. It is also the kev- 
note in self-judgment. One's own actions arouse 
sympathy, an idea of merit, or demerit, and a 
consequent approval or disapproval in one's own 
mind, in "that impartial spectator," which is con- 
science. 

We have thus far shown how, on the one hand, Summary 
the eighteenth century opposed the relativism of 
Hobbes, and attempted to formulate a theory of 
morals that should have an external and immu- 
tabble basis in rationality. We have shown how 



16. 



No Real Self 



in this attempt only a partial view of man was 
taken, and all the rich content of his life being 
neglected, the view must fail to give any lasting 
satisfaction. 

We have shown, on the other hand, how, when 
the eighteenth century opposed the egoism of 
Hobbes, developing a theory of benevolence as 
natural to man, and based on an innate "moral 
sense." Ihis view of society was, however, ar- 
tificial, and failed almost entirely to account for 
the native individualistic impulses of man. It 
failed entirely to transcend the altruism egoism 
opposition or to develop a view which could con- 
tain both elements. All these thinkers have em- 
phasized the contrast between ego and alter, in 
a more or less external way ; but no one of them 
has even suggested a form of individualism 
which should be more than selfishness. Even the 
"cool self-love" of Butler considers only the soul- 
.necd of moral salvation, and has no suggestion 
of a self which shall consider all of human life 
and not merely its moral aspect. Mind, indeed, 
rules during this period of thought, but it is mind 
in the strictly rationalistic sense, formal, abstract, 
and widely separated from volition and feeling. 

I. 
BLAKE'S REACTION ON XVIIITH CEN- 
TURY PHILOSOPHY. 

In 1 781 Kant was to destroy forever this a 
priori rationalism, as well as pure empiricism by 
showing that both are needed to give both form 
and content to this show world of ours ; but, in 
England there arose one who in his own way 
was likewise a world destroyer ; who was to re- 
pudiate rationalism and empiricism, and was to 
preach for the first time in the history of thought 
the cult of the individual. 



17. 



Mysticism of Blake 



This man was William Blake. Born in 1757, 
when rationalism and moralism were in their su- 
premacy, he never for a moment adopted these 
views. Brought up as a follower of Sweden- 
borg, Blake had his impulsive Irish temperament 
intensified by mysticism ; and a mystic he re- 
mained all his life. For him, as for Kant, the 
material world was but a show-world. Nature is 
illusion, and natural philosophy is the study of 
illusion. It was this truth that Blake strives in 
various ways to make vital ; and it places him 
avowedly in opposition to the materialists and 
empiricists, such as Hobbes, Bacon, Locke and 
Newton, the last three of whom he denounces as 
followers of Satan, or the external world. Blake 
is in every respect profoundly mystical. For 
him there is but one real world. All his parables, 
all his prophetic books, and many of his poems 
are just the means he employs to express this 
fact. He not only thought this truth, but lived 
it so completely that Swinburne says of him, that 
"he never really came over to our side of life, but 
remained on the other bank, or called to us from 
half-way across the stream.'" Because of this his 
language, as well as his thought, is often obscure 
as though he found it difficult, and indeed, im- 
possible to tell in ordinary phraseology what he 
saw and heard when, in his visions, he passed be- 
hind the veil of Maya. But certain he is that the 
spiritual values are the greatest values, and the 
material values, valueless without them. 

That a man with this view would react His Individualism 

strongly against the conventional formal philos- 
ophy of the rationalistic eighteenth century, is 
natural. That he should have developed in con- 
trast to this philosophy a theory of intense in- 



" Swinburne, "A Critical Essay on Blake," p. 7. 



18. 

dividnalism which should utterly transcend the 
animal egoism of Hobbes, and anticipate, and 
even in part transcend the later individualism of 
the nineteenth century, this, was indeed not to be 
expected. Had he phrased his theory in philo- 
sophical instead of mystical terms, he would 
have been hailed as leader of the individualistic 
revolution, but, acclaimed or not, he does antici- 
pate all that is worth while in the individualism 
of Stirner, of Nietzsche and of Emerson. His 
criticism of rationalism, of moralism, and of the 
absorption of self in the world is, when stripped 
of its obscure wording, wonderfully keen in its 
analysis. 

II. 
IRRATIONALISM OF BLAKE. 
Although Blake is generally classed with Swe- 
denborg and Boehme among the visionaries, he is 
not like them, sectarian, but is universal. Where 
they directed their attacks against the Church 
and endeavored to establish a new theology, 
Blake's thoughts were confined in no such way. 
He concerned himself not with theology, but 
with philosophy, not with the Church, but with 
life; not with sects, but with humanity. It is 
just because rationalism and moralism and be- 
nevolence do not satisfy human need that Blake 

Totality of Blake's condemns them. 

Views Rationalism chains the spirit of man to a cold 

rock, and extinguishes the fire of enthusiasm.' 
Moralism spreads over him dark branches that 
exclude the light of day.^ Altruism and benevo- 
lence neglect self-government.^ A man cannot 
give himself until he has a self to give. Blake 
reaches thus the important and very modern 
view that no one department of thought may 



' Blake, "Book of Urizen." 
'' Blake, "Book of Ahania." 
* Blake, "Book of Los." 



19. 



monopolize man. Not rationalism, not moral- 
ism, not altruism, but life, is what humanity 
seeks, and this may be found only in complete 
self-realization. Only in this complete self-real- 
ization can these lesser partial phases find a 
place. Elake is the first thinker to give a suffi- 
cient place to self-realization, and to self-hood. 
That this contribution was not recognized, is due 
partly to his obscure life, and more to his mys- 
tical phraseology. This with his dangerous rep- 
utation as a visionary kept him a closed book to 
the respectable reading public. 

Blake's reaction against the eighteenth-century 
philosophy, we shall thus consider under the 
three heads mentioned above. They are : ( i ) ir- 
rationalism, (2) immoralism, (3) individualism. 
In all three respects Blake is undoubtedly the 
first philosopher to voice this rebellion against 
tlie rationalism, moralism, and soulless altruism 
of the enlightenment. This note of rebellion was 
to be again struck in the nineteenth century by 
Stirner and Nietzsche, and sounded so that all 
the world might hear. 

That Blake's influence was not immediate is all 
the more reason why he should be given the 
credit of being the first, now that the fact is 
known. 

The irrationalism of Blake was due to his idea 
that rationalism, instead of being desirable, is 
essentially evil, and must be renounced. The 
reasoning power is the source of evil, in that it 
draws attention to the material world, and to the 
conquest of this Vv'orld. It is the passive ele- 
ment in life, and thus again evil, because it 
bounds and restrains. Blake is opposed to this, 
for he is essentially the preacher of energv. Like 



Rationalism and 
Restraint Evil 



20. 



Transvaluation 



Nietzsche, who says, "Eternal vigor of life is the 
important thing;'" to him "energy is eternal de- 
light."' It is the original element, and he empha- 
sizes it because its nature is creative and inspir- 
ing. It is in contrast to this that reason is evil. 
It cannot create ; it can only control. It is con- 
firming, not boundless. Thus Blake formed his 
first great pair of contraries. "With contraries 
there is no progression. Attraction and repul- 
sion, reason and energy, love and hate are neces- 
sary to human existence. From these contraries 
spring good and evil. Good is the passive, and 
obeys reason, (hence for Blake it is really the 
bad). Evil is the active springing from energy. 
"Good is heaven, evil is hell."^ 

. It must be understood, however, that to Blake 
hell was heaven, and heaven was hell. He de- 
fines hell as the "passion of enthusiasm."* In 
this transvaluation of values, Blake would out- 
Nietszche Nietszche. 

Blake believed that it is only in his fallen state 
(by which Blake means imprisoned in the world 
of nature,) that man, under the dominion of rea- 
son recognizes good and evil. But the chief evil 
of reason is, not the effect of its restraint, but 
the restraint itself. "Those who restrain desire, 
do so because theirs is weak enough to be re- 
strained ; and the restrainer or reason usurps its 
place and governs the unwilling."' To Blake, 
reason is "the eternal No" — the egoist. It means 
with him the faculty that entices us to claim ex- 
clusive reality for our own sensations and build 
up selfhood's dwelling in memories of our own 
experiences ; the great "chaos" which promul- 



^ Nietzsche, "Human All Too Human," p. 178. 
'"Marriage of Heaven and Hell," p. 4, Proverbs. 
* "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," p. 3. 
^"Marriage of Heaven and Hell," p. 23, Blake. 
""Marriage of Heaven and Hell," p. 4, Blake. 



21. 
gates "laws of prudence" for its own protection 

and calls them the laws of God. It is what we 
call materialism, and has caused all evil and mis- 
ery, for once we believe that our selfhoods or 
spectres, as Blake names them, alone exist, we 
seek to feed them and preserve them at whatever 
sorrow and toil to others.'" 

Thus we see that to Blake it is the subjection 
of men to material forms, to moral laws, and 
social codes that has caused the division in their 
minds between imagination which is "God," or 
"the eternal man," and reason which is Satan or 

fallen man. "Men," he says, take two contraries, Rationalism Due to 
which are called qualities, with which every sub- pj^itude 
stance is clothed. They name them good and 
evil. From them they make an abstract which is 
a negation, not only of the substance from which 
it is derived a murderer of its own body, but also 
a murderer of every divine member. It is the 
reasoning power. An abstract objecting power 
that negatives everything. This is the holy rea- 
soning power, and in its holiness is closed the 
abomination of desolation."^ Elsewhere Satan 
says, "I am God, O sons of men; I am your ra- 
tional power. Am I not Bacon and Newton who 
teach humility to man ?"^ 

From these questions may be discovered 
Blake's attitude, both toward rationalism and 
toward the natural empirical school of philoso- 
phy. Throughout his works he used the names 
of Locke, Bacon and Newton as illustrations of 
the type of thought which he abhorred. How 
much this attitude is like the latter attitude of 
Stirner and Nietzsche may be seen from the fol- 
lowing. Stirner affirms that "reason which gives 



' Ellis and Yeats, The Works of Blake, vol. 1, p. 
248. 

^ Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 10. 
^ Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 54. 



22. 

general laws, puts the individual man in irons. 
If reason rules, persons succumb.'" 

Nietzsche likewise exclaims in truly irration- 
alistic manner : "Rationality at any price is dan- 
g-erous as a life-undermining force.'" 

All three men thus affiliated through their con- 
sistent repudiation of rationalism because of its 
restraint. In his eternal nature man could per- 
ceive infinity. "It is only the five senses that 
barred man against the infinite."' "For man has 
closed himself up till he sees all things through 
the chinks of his cavern."' This is because under 
the dom.inion of space and time, reason is divided 
from imagination under three degrees, the phy- 
sical, the mental and the imaginative or spiritual. 
In a reproduction of the Laocoon Blake repre- 
sents these degrees as God, Satan and Adam 
struggling in the toils of nature, the devouring 
serpent who has ensnared them. Because since 
his fall, man is the child of space and time. Rea- 
son is thus enabled to weave about him the hypo- 
critical "net of religion" as both Blake and Stir- 
ner call it. 

Thus because rationalism keeps man from 
complete development, and limits him to the 
world, Blake repudiates it. Like Kant, Blake 
realizes that the material world is a world of 
phenomena which we perceive under the form of 
space and time. Like Kant, Blake preaches that 
reason, whether a posteriori or a priori, cannot 
transcend this material world ; but unlike Kant, 
Blake says that we may pierce the veil of illusion 
not by will or morality, but by creative imagina- 
tion, the spiritual vision, the complete self-real- 

' Nietzsche, "Birth of Tragedy," p. 191. 
^ Blake, "Europe, a Prophecy," p. 8. 

* Blake, "Marriage of Heaven aqd Hell," p. 14. 

* Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," 1-137. 



23. 



ization. In taking this view, Blake is far broader 
than Kant, whose stern moralism can never 
satisfy the human heart or reason. Reason, 
since it is concerned with the results of the five 
senses, divides man from his imagination, his 
eternal nature. It curbs, and hence weakens. 
In this weakness and passivity of reason, lies its 
essential evil for Blake. He is above all, the 
preacher of the ideal of strength. Imagination 
is good, just because it is a form of energy ; and 
of positive strength. Blake has no suggestion of 
the weakness, the morbid in his irrationalism, 
such as the later irrationalists, Nietzsche and even 
Ibsen have shown. He is essentially positive 
even in his negations ; that is he never leaves the 
mere negation, but emphasizes the positive, con- 
structive, strengthening ideals. 

We may now see that where, as in discussions 
of irrationalism, the first place is usually given to 
Stirner it ought rightly to belong to Blake, for 
Blake anticipates Stirner in all his main ideas. 
Stirner, rebelling against the humanity of Feuer- 
bach, complained that the individual was lost. It 
was all mankind instead of man. Let us note his 
own words : "God and mankind are concerned for 
them.selves. Let me then likewise concern myself 
for myself, who am equally with God the nothing 
of all others, who am my all, who am the only one. 
(der Einzige.)'" "Nothing is more to me than 
myself."" In this way Stirner reacts upon that 
form of humanity which forgets that humanity is 
made up of individuals only. "In the law of rea- 
son man determines himself out of himself.'" 
Reason, which gives general laws, puts the indi- 
vidual man in irons by the thoughts of human- 



Irrationalism : 
Blake and Stirner 



' Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 5. 
' Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 6. 
* Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 64. 



24. 



Blake and Ibsen 



Blake and Emerson 



ity."* "If reason rules, the person succumbs.'" 
"That I make myself and be, this alone is rea- 
son, be I ever so irrational."^ In these sayings 
we find Stirner putting in another form the same 
idea that had been expounded earlier by Blake ; 
namely, that reason bounds and curbs and pre- 
vents the freedom of the individual. 

But Blake anticipates also the irrationalism 
of Ibsen, for he, too, believed that the "mi- 
nority is always right. "^ Almost a century ear- 
lier than Brand or An Enemy of the People, in 
which Ibsen voices his idea that while people 
praise benevolence, they punish its performance, 
almost a century earlier Blake made Los, the 
Spirit of Freedom, exclaim : "You smile with 
pomp and rigor ; you talk of benevolence and vir- 
tue ; I act benevolence and virtue, and am mur- 
dered time after time.""* Where Ibson disclaims 
in Ghosts against "law and order,"^ Blake had 
earlier declared that "Improvement makes 
straight roads ; but the crooked roads without 
improvement are the roads of genius ;'" and 
again, "He who desires, but acts not, breeds pes- 
tilence."* 

Perhaps of all the nineteenth century individ- 
ualists our own Emerson repeats most nearly 
the irrationalism of Blake. Emerson says, "We 
pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven 
takes care you shall not be if there is anything 
good in you. Dante was very bad company, and 
was never invited to dinner."" And asfain "Life 



* Stirner, "The Ego and Flis Own," p. 137. 
" Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 138. 
■'' Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 461. 
■* Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People,'' p. 134. 
' Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 91. 
Mbsen, "Ghosts," p. 220. 
"Blake, "Proverbs of Hell." 
® Emerson, "Society and Solitude," p. 7. 



25. 
spurns all systems, breaks all barriers.'" The 
only sin is limitation.'" Like Blake, Emerson is 
sane, and has nothing of the morbid taint which 
characterizes the individualitists on the Conti- 
nent. Neither Blake nor Emerson is a decad- 
ent. Emerson's irrationalism .while phrased in 
the language of the world declaims against the 
rationalism which curbs and bounds, and in this, 
as in the discussion of immoralism and individ- 
ualism we shall see that Blake anticipated him. 
III. 

THE IMMORALISM OF BLAKE. ^ ,. . 

. . , Immoralism oi 

Through the net of religion "reason creates the ^^^y,^ 

moral law and enslaves not the intellect only, but 
the will, the energies of man. Because of this 
creation by the dual, uninspired reason, and be- 
cause it bounds the energies, Blake repudiates 
the moral law, and thus connects his irrationalism 
with his immoralism, and also with his energism. 
We have seen that Mandeville, while upholding 
evil rather than good, did not at all change the 
standard of good and evil. Blake, however, re- 
verses the moral standard. He is the first phi- 
losopher to do this. Like Milton's Satan, he ex- 
claimed "Evil, be thou my good."^ Thus, in fact, 
the first transvaluation of all values is accom- 
plished, not by Nietzsche, but by Blake. He does 
not say that morality is not, but that morality as 
outlined by society is immorality. The reversal 
of the moral standard is due to the fact that 
Blake's ideal is not passive goodness, but dy- 
namic strength ; not moral restraint, but free, 
creative energy. Goodness, which is not natural, 
but is the result of submission to an external 

' Emerson, "Society and Solitude," p. 7. 
• Emerson, "Society and Solitude," p. 171, Every- 
man Ed. 
' Mjlton, "Paradise Lost," p. 68. 



26. 

moral law, is really evil. Goodness, Blake would 
define as the creative energy of the strong intel- 
lect, and wh^the weak may succumb to an ex- 
ternal law, the strong should rise above it. It is 
Strength j^^^ ^^^^ foisting of an external moral law upon 

and Weakness ^^^ strong natures of the world that breeds hy- 

pocrisy and injustice. "One law for the lion and 
the ox is oppression.'" 

Ihe passive patie/ice of the ox (or ordinary 
moral, but dull person,) is not a sign of good- 
ness, but of stupidity. Blake would here seem 
to countenance a double moral code, such as that 
which Nietzsche later called master-morality and 
slave-morality, but while he feels that the strong 
are rightly the first to rebel against the moral 
law, he considers the law itself is evil. It came 
into being only when man bound by his finitude 
looked only upon finite things and finite rela- 
tions, and when the strong threw off its yoke 
they will free not themselves only, but all man- 
ki .d. Since finite, dulling reason is the cause of 
the creation of the moral law, emancipation must 
come throuph the transcending of reason by im- 
agination which can perceive the holiness of the 
infinite, and receive from it strength to repudiate 
both the bounds of reason and the hypocrisy of 
the moral law. 

There are throughout the works of Blake, but 
especially in the Prophetic Books dealing with 
the fall and deliverance of man, and using physi- 
ology and psychology in their development ; many 
sayings which indicate clearly his attitude toward 
morality, as compared with strength and intelli- 
gence. Some of the principal ones are as fol- 
lows: 

I. "The tygers of wrath are wiser than the 



'Blake, picture, p. 22, Vol. III., Ellis and Yeats Ed. 



horses of instruction.""' 

2. "The eagle never lost so much time as when 
he submitted to learn of the crow.'" 

3. "Expect poison from the standing water.'" 

4. "He who desires, but acts not, breeds pesti- Good and Evil 
lence."^ 

5. "Improvement makes straight roads ; but 
the crooked roads without improvement are the 
roads of genius.'" 

6. "Exuberance is beauty.'"' 

7. "Enough or too much.'" 

8. "You never know^ what is enough, unless 
you know what is more than enough."* 

These sayings which Blake calls "Proverbs of 
Hell," serve to show his complete reversal of the 
usual moral law. and also serve to show clearly 
his hatred of moral restraint. This was due to 
the fact that he thought restraint necessarily 
hypocritical since the motive, the inner spirit 
was to him the only truly real, eternal element iri 
man. His mood, however, is never the ethical 
mood of sufficiency, but always that of super- 
abundance or of want, as these have been de- 
fined in a recent philosophical work.** Like Nietz- 
sche, Blake's ideal is beyond good and ezil, but 
he found for his superman not tlie maxim "Be 
hard," but the maxim. "I will create ;" for his 
superman is not a "a blonde beast," but the great 
creative genius. Like Stirner, he would say : "I 
am my own creator."" To Blake, redemption can 
never come through doing good, through moral- 



' Blake. "Marriage of Heaven and Hell": '•Proverbs 
of Hell." 

Mbid. "Proverbs of Hell." 

' * "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"' ; "Proverbs of 
Hell." 

" Shaw, C. G.. "The Ego and Its Place in the 
World." p. 13-20. 
p. 13-20. 

^^ Stirner, "The Ego arnl His Own," p. 4. 



28. 

ity, redemption can come only through faith and 
imagination. "If morality were Christianity, 
Socrates would be the Saviour."* Blake's chief 
biographer sums up his moral attitude in these 
words : "Energy acted leads to good ; restrained, 
it leads to stagnation, and stagnation leads to 
corruption."^ Throughout the Prophetic Books 
in a seemingly chaotic, but really intricate or- 
derly manner, runs this story of the Fall of Man 
under the dominion of Reason, with its attendant 
restraint and hypocritical moral code, and his final 
redemption through energy and imagination. 
The division of imagination and spirit is the be- 
ginning of selfhood. Reason establishes logic, 
which is the chain which locks men up into for- 
getfulness and necessity. Cold reason and fiery 
energy chained together form an orb of fire 
which, in true Schopenhauerian language, Blake 
calls "the human illusion.'' This human illusion 
or created man, is locked up within the five 
senses, and forgets his eternal life."^ 

Like good and evil, virtue and vice are, in 
Blake's view, naturally reversed ; or rather both 
are delusions, due to the cramping of man's in- 
Virtue and Vice tellect under the vale of reason. "Holiness is 
not the price of entrance into heaven."^ Reason, 
by his evil laws, kills love and forms the deca- 
logue. These commandments, Blake denotes as 
"forms of dark delusion." Churches, hospitals, 
palaces, were built like nets, to catch the joys of 
eternity till, like a dream, eternity was oblit- 
erated."* 



' Ellis and Yeats, Works of Blake, Vol. I., p. 125. 

-Ibid, Vol. II., p. 78. 

"Blake, Works. Vol. II., Ellis and Yeats Ed., on 
Book of Los. 

' Blake, Works, Y'ol. III., Book of Urizen, p. 23. 

^ Blake, "Why Aien Enter Heaven," small ed., p. 
252 

"Blake, Works, Vol. III., "Song of Los," p. 2. 



29. 



This emphasis on joy is characteristic of 
BlaKc's attitude. No act lacking spontaneity and 
joy could be called worthy. This idea is parallel Strength and 
to his idea of strength and energism, for the Joy 
strong man does as he desires, and as a conse- 
quence acts with joy. 

As the five senses narrow man's outlook, so 
"thought changed the infinite to a serpent'" "and 
man fled from its face into the forests of night." 
By this forest, Blake means the physical sciences 
which man studied when he could no longer dare 
to study the infinite. He is afraid. "Man be- 
came an Angel and God a tyrant crowned,' and 
humanity became a weeping infant.'" Over the 
doors of the temples they wrote : 'Thou shalt not,' 
and over the chimneys: 'Fear' is written.'" Man 
has become a slave of the moral law and of rea- 
son. As Stirner would put it, "He is possessed 
by the good and virtue,' and in the form of mor- 
ality Christianity holds him prisoner.' 

Against the God of traditional theism Blake 
makes a firm stand, as against moralism. He is 
the god of this world only, Satan, or the reason- 
ing power. Like Ibsen in Brand, Blake com- 
plains that the traditional God is venerable and 
hoary, where he would make God, eternal en- 
ergy and the creation "a deed of lawful energy,'" 
He says "that to make God wise, philanthropic, 
gentle and good is to lower your image of God 
not less than if you had predicated of Him ex- 
actly the reverse qualities."* The God of this 
world, has power only over this world and his 



-* ^ "Europe, a Prophecy," pp. 8-10. 
'"Jerusalem," p. 81. 

* "Europe," p. 8-10. 

* "The Ego and His Own," p. 57. 

* Ibid, p. 58. 

" "Book of Los," Chap. I. 

' Swinburne, "A Critical Essay on Blake," p. 150. 



30. 

power ends with death ; but the only perfect man 
is of eternity. When man perceives what he was 
he was and shall be the chain of reason and re- 
ligion relax. 

The God of this world has power over appear- 
ances, but not over realities. Appearances and 
relations he can alter, but cannot change one in- 
dividual life to another or reverse the laws of 
personality. "In eternity, one thing never 
changes into another thing. Each identity is 
eternal.' Virtue and vice are changeable and per- 
ishable, but the underlying individual life is im- 
perishable."^ The God of reason, or Jehovah is 
the author of the decalogue, the chain of the 
moral law. For this Blake has no use. It be- 
longs to the slave-morality. "No virtue," he ex- 
claims, "can exist without breaking these ten com- 
mandments."^ What are called vices in the nat- 
ural world are the highest virtues in the spiritual 
world."* 

To Blake, God or the divine nature is simply 
the human raised to the highest power. "God 
only acts or is in existing beings or men."^ God 
is the free, creative spirit, the unfallen part of 
man. Thus man has virtue only by his reason 
or understanding, not by his imagination and 
genius. "Man can become as God only by re- 
sisting the 'god of this world,' or reason. If 
Prometheus cannot, Zeus will not, deliver us. 
Man must fight his way by impulsive energy and 
energetic faith, and having done so, Hell will 
appear as Heaven and Heaven as Hell. The 
Abyss, once entered, green pastures appear, and 
the paradise of resignation will appear as a place 



'Blake, Muses' Library Ed., p. 250. 

^ Swinburne, "A Critical Essay on Blake," p. 27. 

"'Marriage of Heaven and Hell," p. 23. 

* Ellis and Yeats, Vol. II., p. 145. 

^ Blake, "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," p. 16. 



31. 

of emptiness or desolation/ Here again is the 
transvaluation of values. Neither good nor evil 
preserve their ordinary meanings. With Stir- 
ner, Blake would have exclaimed : "What's 
good? What's bad? I, myself, am my concern, 
and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has 
meaning for me.'" Blake's stand against tradi- 
tional theism often makes his Christianity seem 
doubtful. In the orthodox sense, it was more 
than doubtful, yet Blake believed himself to be 
truly a follower of Christ, and uses Christ as 
the symibol of free, creative imagination. 

Like Bernard Shaw, however, Blake seems to 
regard the theistic Heaven as a most uncomfort- 
able place. 

According to Blake, the truly moral will not 
attempt to keep the moral laws. This, of course, 
has been true of reformers throughout the his- 
tory of the world. Blake believes that "virtue 
should be impulsive, and that unimpulsive virtue 
is always Pharisaic."^ In his own words : 

"To be good only is to be a God or else a 
Pharisee."^ 

Nietzsche, in the same manner, speaks of "the 
necessity of crime imposed on the titanically- 
striving individual,^ and by this implies the same 
idea as that in which Blake believes : namely, 
that the strong individual who acts from impulse, 
may, and often will, act in defiance of the moral 
law. As Blake's chief editor phrases it, "The 
ethical impulse always breaks the ethical law.'" 
Indeed, this law is always established for the ma- 
jority. According to the ideas of both Blake and 



^Swinburne. "Essay on Blake," p. 220. 
- Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 6. 
' Swinburne, "Critical Essay on Blake," p. 246. 
'Blake, Works, small ed., p. 116. 
'Nietzsche, "Birth of Tragedy," p. 79. 
'Ellis and Yeats Ed., Works of Blake, Vol. I., p. 
240. s» 



32. 

Nietzsche, he acts rightly who so spurns the com- 
mon law that he may follow a higher. Christ 
did this, as Blake shows, when he picked corn 
on the Sabbath, ate with the publicans and sin- 
ners, and broke other ceremonial laws of the He- 
brews that he might more freely follow the law 
of his own nature/ 

Morality should be the aim of man, but not 
intelligence. Here also Blake approximates to 
Nietzsche's saying that, "The moral man is no 
nearer intelligence than the physical man."" 
Blake, moreover, in his discussion of the moral 
law, maintains that men punish real virtue just 
because it does transcend the moral law. In the 
Song of Los, Los, the Spirit of Freedom ex- 
claims : 

"You smile with pomp and rigor, 
You talk of benevolence and virtue, 
I act benevolence and virtue, and 
am murdered time after time."^ 

How true this is all people know. The world, 
as history shows, has always crucified its redeem- 
ers. It was in this same spirit that Stirner, criti- 
cising Feuerbach, wrote : "You love man, but 
you torture the individual man, the egoist. Your 
philanthropy is the tormenting of men.'" 

When Blake casts aside the moral law in favor 
of strength, he casts aside also that which is the 
cardinal virtue of Geuillinex, namely, humility. 
Rather than any idea of "Despectio sui,'" Blake 
believes that man must trust himself to the utter- 
most. Since there is no "absentee God'" to help 



^ Blake, "Marriage of Heaven and Hell,'' small ed., 
p. 192 
- Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human," p. 179. 
^ Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 91. 
'Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 387. 
"Geuillinex, "Ethica," Tr. 1 Cap. II., Sec. 2, par 2. 
* Caryle, "Sartor Resartus," Everyman Ed., p. 15. 



him look inwards, and follow the god who is his 
own spiritual nature. 

"Humility is only doubt 
and doth the sun and moon blot out.'" 

Then Blake asks : 

"Was Jesus humble, or did He give any 
proofs of humility?"' 
And causes God to say : 

"H thou humblest Thyself Thou humblest me. 
Thou also dwellest in eternity. 
Thou art a man. God is no more. 
Thine own humanity learn to adore ; 
For that is My spirit of life.'" 

To Blake even self-sacrifice such as the vica- 
rious death of Jesus implies not humility, but 
"honest triumphant pride'"* and faith, both in the 
unique individuality and in the final value of 
spiritual forces. In his attack on humility Blake 
anticipates Stirner, who said : "Moral influence 
starts where humiliation begins. It is nothing 
else than humiliation and self-abasement." 

Throughout all this immoralism, this stern re- Immoralism 



33. 



bellion is against morality as developed into 
codes and laws, and so imposed on society. It is 
in no way a rebellion against the true worth or 
value of life. But man must be himself and an 
external law imposed from without is foreign to 
his nature. As we have already seen, Stirner 
later developed imn^oralism in The Ego and Hi^ 
Own. His utterances are more explosive in char- 
acter, and far less coherent than the earlier views 
of Blake. To him, "Moral faith is as fanatical 



Blake & Stirner 



' Blake, "Ideas of Good and Evil," small ed., p. 43. 
Moid, p. 112. 

° Blake, "Ideas of Good and Evil," small ed., p. 113. 

* Stirner, "The Ego and His Own." p. 105. 

'Blake, "Ideas of Good and Evil," p. 111. 



as religious faith.'" "The web of hypocrisy hangs 
on the frontiers of the two domains, morahty 
and egoism."^ To Stirner people who be- 
lieve in morality or in a spiritual realm are pos- 
sessed of *'a fixed idea.'"" He would have put 
Blake in this class ; for in spite of his immoral- 
ism, or rather in accord with it, Blake is a be- 
liever in, a seer of, the spiritual world beyond. 
Both men agree, however in their denunciation 
of conventional rationalism and moralism, but 
where Stirner speaks in the cause of the ego, 
Blake is immoralistic in the cause of strength 
and power. 

This ideal of strength allies Blake with Emer- 
son, who also advocates it. Where Blake 
decries goodness because it is passive and weak, 
Emerson says : "Nature, as we know her, 
is no saint . . . Her darlings, the great, the 
strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, 
Blake and Emerson Jq not come out of the Sunday school, nor weigh 
their food, nor punctually keep the command- 
ments."^ "The virtues of society are the vices of 
the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery 
that we must cast away our virtues.'" Again he 
exclaims, "It is as easy for a strong man to be 
strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.'"" "The 
objection to conforming to usages is that it scat- 
ters your force.'" Still more is he like Blake 
when he says, "No law can be sacred to me but 
that of my own nature. Good and bad are but 
names very readily transferable to this or that ; 
the only right is what is after my constitution 
the only wrong what is against it.'" Society 

' Stirner, "The Ego and His Own," p. 53. 
' Ibid, p. 67. 
" Ibid, p. 54. 

4 T? i 



' Ibid, p. 54. 

* Emerson, "Experience," p. 239, Everyman Ed. 

• Ibid, "Circles," pp. 1-176, Everyman Ed. 

8 -c.^ i.c ,if _. i: ^^ " _ 41 XT , ^ 



35. 



everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood 
of everyone of its members.'" All these qwota- 
tions serve to show how really immoralistic Em- 
erson is, in his regard for strength and individ- 
uality. 

Not only did Blake anticipate the immoralism 
of Stirner and of Emerson, but also that of 
Ibsen, Ibsen, like Blake, rebels at current 
morality because it stifles and weakens, in- 
stead of supporting the individual. His ideal, ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ 
however, is not so much the ideal of strength as 
it is the freedom of the individual from the bonds 
of the law. "Oh, that perpetual law and order ;"' 
I often think that is what does all the mischief in 
this world of ours ... I must have done with 
all this constraint and insincerity. I can endure 
it no longer. I must work my way out to free- 
dom" . . . And we are, one and all, so piti- 
fully afraid of the light.'"' 

This is the burden of Ibsen's message in re- 
gard to moralism. More freedom, more light, 
more fresh air ! We shut ourselves up in a "ma- 
chine-sewn" order of things, and though it would 
unravel at a touch, we think it eternal and neces- 
sary and succumb to it. Unlike Blake, Ibsen, in 
his preaching of freedom is more or less morbid. 
He does not escape the taint of the decadents of 
the continent. His Nora, his Hedda Gabler, or 
Mrs. Alving, or Irene, or even Hilda Wangel 
with her plea for a "robust conscience" are ab- 
normal in life and character. Blakehas nothing 
of this. He is thoroughly sane. 

In the great trilogy of the Niebelungenlied, Immoralism: 
Wagner joins the ranks of the immoralists. Like Blake and Wagner 
Blake, Wagner worships strength. His Siegfried 



^ Ibid, "Self-reliance." p. 32, Everyman Ed. 
' Ibsen, "Ghosts," p. 220. 
^ Ibsen, "Ghosts," p. 225. 



36. 

is the personification of strength. Wagner, can- 
not, however, create his strong man invulnerable. 
He knows no fear. His iron will conquers the 
material in the form of Fafner, the intellectual 
in the form of Wotan, but law and order must 
be preserved, and Siegfried falls. Wagner shows 
the impotence of the merely intellectual, the 
strength of the voluntaristic, but he fails, as did 
Ibsen, to achieve a union of the two or find 
aught but a pessimistic outcome. Blake is in 
strong contrast to this, for his immoralsm is 
never pessimistic ; he never loses faith in the pos- 
sibility of the ultimate redemption of man. 

Having compared or contrasted Blake with 
Stirner, Emerson, Ibsen and Wagner, having 
Immoralism: shown how he anticipates each and has their 

Blake and Nietzsche "^'iews without the decadent taint, let us see how 
he compares with that most talked-of immoralist, 
Frederic Nietzsche. Nietzsche, like Blake, be- 
lieves in, nay, worships, strength. The "will to 
power" is his watchword. In method, too, he 
more nearly approaches Blake than any of the 
other immoralists. Many of his sayings might 
have been taken from Blake's "Proverbs of 
Flell." Nietzsche says, "Active sin is the prop- 
erly Promethean virtue." Like Blake, he is 
against Christianity as it has been developed. He 
is more bitter than Blake, for he says "Christian- 
ity is the most extravagant burlesque of the 
moral theme to which mankind has hitherto been 
obliged to listen."^ Blake believes in Christianity 
as preached by Jesus, but declaims against the 
formal elements historically developed. Nietz- 
sche's superman is beyond good and evil. "The 



' Nietzsche, ."Birth of Tragedy," p. 9. 



37. 
sting of conscience, like the gnawing of a dog at 
a stone is foolishness."^ 

Blake's real individual is likewise beyond good 
and evil, not because he has become hard, but 
because having passed behind the veil of Maya he 
perceives that "Everything is holy ;" that good 
and evil are finite creations, and neither may par- 
take of the eternal life of the spirit. 

We have now seen that Blake anticipating the 
whole modern immoralistic revolution as he an- 
ticipated modern irrationalism, approximates to 
Stirner and Ibsen in his plea for freedom from 
law and order, and is like Wagner, Emerson and 
Nietzsche, in his ideal of strength and power. 
We have seen too that unlike Nietzsche and like 
only to Emerson, his revolt while dynamic and 
reaching to the foundations of things, is yet thor- 
oughly sane and healthy. He is in no sense a de- 
cadent, and has no taint of the morbid pessimism 
that characterizes the immoralists of the nine- 
teenth century. 

III. 
INDIVIDUALISM OF BLAKE. 

The irrationalism and immoralism of Blake, of 
which we have thus far spoken, form the de- 
structive portion of his philosophy, the strong 
reaction of his imaginative mode of thought 
against the materialistic, rationalistic, moralistic 
thought of his time ; against the interpretation of 
mere appearances or even of manifest forces as 
final reality. Reality was to him no meaningless 
dig-an-sich, no groundless zvill-to-live, but sub- 
stance manifesting itself in appearance and force 
which are in themselves unreal and delusions. 
Being was to him as it is to one of our present 



'Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human," p. 217. 



38. 

philosophers/ something intellectual and spirit- 
ual ; something to which the intellectual and spir- 
itual self of man approximates. We see, there- 
fore, how natural it was for Blake to oppose the 
Hobbist self which was based in nature, and also 
the naturalistic view of the world held by Bacon, 
Newton, and Locke. We may see, too, that he 
would naturally oppose both the theory of eternal 
and immutable morality which laid emphasis on 
the external moral law with its obligation to re- 
straint, and its merely practical repudiation by 
Mandeville. Both the irrationalism and immor- 
alism of Blake went deeper into the spiritual na- 
ture of man, and for that reason repudiated the 
shallower views. 

This destructive portion of Blake's philosophy 
is, however, not all. He had, also, a constructive 
philosophy to be found in his startling theory of 
individualism. Blake was, by no means the first 
individualist in the world, all great men being, 
more or less, individualists. Perhaps the su- 
preme example of individualism is Christ, whose 
individualism is usually overlooked in the empha- 
sis placed upon his altruism. Blake is, however, 
the first writer, the first philosopher, to be the 
advocate of individualism as a definite theory of 
life. It is not individualism in any crass form 
that he advocates, such as the egoism of Hobbes. 
Such egoism, we have said, he names "self- 
hood," using this word to indicate the lower 
form of selfishness that must be put off. Man 
must be himself. This self is, however, not 
something given, but something to be attained 
with difficulty. It is not the self of Peer Gynt, 
the selfhood of sense, sealed up, that Blake lauds. 
Like Ibsen, he believes that a man "must will 



' C. G. Shaw, "The Ego and Its Place in the World," 
p. 417. 



39. 

himself,'" and win his individuality by the put- 
ting off of the self-hood of sense and reason, and 
the putting on of the higher and truer self of 
imagination and freedom. Throughout Blake's 
longest poem this process is called "the building 
of Jerusalem.'" It is essentially a mental proc- 
ess, a redemption from the thralldom of natural 
law and facts, from the material world. Blake. 
like Kant, believes that "the mind is the law- 
giver to nature,'" but he goes further. Where 
Kant believes the mind must necessarily view 
things under the forms of time and space and 
causality, Blake believes that the mental vision 
may transcend the finite and "perceive infinity," 
and see that "That which is, is not, and that 
which is not, is.'" Analytic reason must yield to 
inspiration. 

In promulgating this theory of individuality, 
Blake is the first philosopher to use the word 
self-hood, as we use it today, though even he re- 
fers to it (with one exception), as the lower self, 
that must be cast off. 

Not only does Blake formulate a fairly consist- 
ent theory of individualism, but he has a definite 
idea of the method by which it is to be attained. 
This is to be done through art. Using the 
word art. in its broadest sense, to denote all that 
is beautiful and spiritual in life, Blake says: 
"Art is the business of life.'" To him, "Nature is 
one form of mental existence and art is another 
and a higher form,"* but art must be freed from 
memory and mere understanding, and reach up- 
ward to the realms of imagination. For this 



* Ibsen, "Emperor and Galilean," II., Act. III., p. 37 
" Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 227. 

' Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason," p. 103. 

* Ibsen, "Emperor and Galilean," I., p. 100. 
' Blake, "Reproduction of the Laocoon." 
"Ellis and Yeats, Vol. 1, p. XII. 



40. 

reason, perhaps, Blake prefers the Gothic to the 
Grecian, calling the Grecian, mathematical form, 
from the reasoning memory, while the Gothic is 
living form and eternal existence. He ever uses 
it as a symbol of free aspiration. 

The emphasis placed by Blake upon art again 
connects him with the nineteenth, rather than 
with the eighteenth century, with the aesthetes 
and Nietzsche, rather than with Lawrence and 
Reynolds. Indeed, Nietzsche almost repeats him 
in saying that "Art and not morality is the proper 
metaphysical activity of man,"* This theory has 
in its Blakean form been consciously or uncon- 
sciously preached by most great men, in that 
they have ever shown forth something beautiful 
or noble as the aim of life. And this beautiful 
or noble idea is just what Blake would call art, 
creation, or "the building of Jerusalem." "Prayer 
is the study of art : praise is the practice of art."' 

Since free imagination produces poetry, Blake 
uses poetry as its symbol "Art and poetry, by 
constantly using symbolism, continually remind 
us that 'nature itself is a symbol.' To remember 
this is to be redeemed from nature's death and 
destruction."' For this reason Blake says: 

"Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Na- 
tions are destroyed or flourish in proportion as 
their poetry, painting and music are destroyed or 
flourish."^ To cultivate the imagination is, how- 
ever, not the work of a moment. Man is "a crea- 
ture of earth," as well as "akin to the sea and the 
air."' He wishes to free himself from sense, but 
cannot. He is too apt to become mere "hand" 
instead of "head." By "hand" Blake symbolizes 



^ Nietzsche, "Birth of Tragedy," p. 8. 

^ Blake, "Reproduction of the Laocoon." 

" Ellis and Yeats, Works of Blake, Vol. I., p. 12. 

* Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 3. 

'Ibsen, "Little Eyolf," p. 136. 



41. 
the mechanical worker. He ever decries the 
merely industrial. Like Aristotle, whose empha- 
sis on the analytic he criticises, he believes that 
mental activity, "contemplative energy,'"' is the 
proper work of mankind, and not mere activism, 
that spends itself on material things. Hand, the 
industrial worker, who acts but cannot think, the 
man in the second class of Plato's "Republic," 
represents to Blake "Pride and self -righteous- 
ness, who has absorbed all his brethren in his 
might ; by war and death winning the labor of 
the husbandman."' 

"Awkwardness armed in steel, folly in a hel- 
met of gold. Weakness with horns and talons, 
ignorance with a ravening beak. Every emanat- 
ive joy forbidden as a crime. Inspiration denied, 
genius forbidden by laws of punishment."' Such 
is P>lake's picture of society under industrial rule. 
For a writer of the eighteenth century it is not 
a bad characterization of "plutocracy." Blake 
would have been a vigorous opponent of the 
present-day "industrial efficiency" cry, and he 
would have opposed it because it tends to mass 
people and to efface individuality. 

The first step in attaining the individuality of 
art is to put ofif selfhood. The Hobbist ego does 
not receive Blake's approval." All that can be 
annihilated must be annihilated, that the children 
of Jerusalem may be redeemed from slavery."* 
In the Book of Milton, Blake causes that poet to 
say: 

"I must cleanse the face of my spirit by self- 
examination. 



* Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics," p. 338. 
" Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 9. 

' Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 9. 

* Blake, "Book of Milton," p. 42-43. 



42. 

To bathe in the waters of life, to wash ofif 

the not-human. 
I come into self-annihilation and the gran- 
deur of inspiration.'" 

This quotation shows clearly that Blake does 
not renounce crass egoism for altruism, nor for 
self-renunciation in the Schopenhaurian sense. 
He renounces a lower egoism, in favor of a high- 
er egoism ; selfishness in favor of real person- 
ality. 

For the attainment of personality, of individ- 
uality man must put off not only the selfhood of 
sense, but he must destroy negation, or the ana- 
lytical reasoning power, since this binds his mind 
to earth and starves the free, creative spirit. This 
reasoning power "is a false body, an incrustation 
over the face of my immortality : a selfhood 
which must be put off and annihilated always."' 
Here again Blake does not oppose one equal to 
another, but superimposes the spiritual over the 
material ; as before the superimposed the spirit- 
ual over the physical ; the spiritual being not only 
higher, but being the only real existence as op- 
posed to the illusion of the physical and material. 
Against this task of self-annihilation and spirit- 
ual progress stands Satan, the reasoning power,'"' 
"the great self-hood,'" who endeavors to make 
illusion seem real. In despair the spirit of eter- 
nal man cries out helplessly 

"I cannot put off my human form ; I strive, but 
strive in vain."° "Wherefore hast thou shut me 
into the winter of human life?"* "They know not 
why they love. Calling that love which is envy, 



' Blake, "Book of Milton," p. 43. 
= Blake, "Book of Milton," p. 43. 
^ "Jerusalem," p. 20. 
' Ibid, p. 20. 
' Thid, p. 17. 
« Ibid, p. 22. 



43. 
revenge and cruelty, which separated the stars 
from the mountains, the mountains from man. 
And left man a little grovelling root outside of 
Himself.'" All love is lost ; terror succeeds and 
hatred instead of love. And stern demands of 
Right and Duty instead of Liberty.'" Since by 
this putting off of Selfhood, man may find him- 
self in reality, and so in the Book of Milton, the 
poet cries out : 

"I will go down to self-annihilation and 
eternal death. 
Lest the Last Judgment come and find me 
unregenerate 

And I be seized and given into the hands 
of my own selfhood."' 

This imprisonment in the selfhood of sense or 
of reason, is the Blakean idea of eternal punish- 
ment. Like Ibsen, he looks forward beyond 
sense, beyond reason, to a third empire"^ of the 
spirit, and of entrance into this empire men are 
deprived only through their own blindness and 
stupidity. The Last Judgment will not witness 
the division of men according to the standards of 
good and evil. Since as we have said, both of 
these Blake believed to be delusions of Satan or 
the reasoning power, his idea of the Last Judg- 
ment must have a different basis. This basis 
stamps Blake as an intellectualist par excellence, 
for on that day he claims, men will be divide^l 
into the wise and the foolish, \^^itness his own 
assertions : 

"The combats of good and evil is eating of 
the Tree of Knowledge. The combats of truth 
and error is eatinof of the Tree of Life . . . 



' "lerusalem," p. 17. 

^ "Jerusalem," p. 22. 

'Blake, "Book of Milton," p. 12. 

* Ibsen, "Emperor and Galilean," pp. 105 and 114. 



44. 

We don't find anywhere that Satan is accused of 
sin. He is only accused of unbelief, and thereby 
of drawing man into sin that he may accuse him. 
Such is the Last Judgment ; a deliverance from 
Satan's accusations. Satan thinks that sin is dis- 
pleasing to God. He ought to know that nothing 
is displeasing to God but unbelief and eating of 
the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil."^ Mak- 
ing thus of the Last Judgment intellectual judg- 
ment upon man's intellect, we may expect that 
he will reject material worldly advantages in 
favor of mental life. And that he does this, we 
may see from his own words. "What are the 
gifts of the spirit but mental gifts? When any 
individual rejects error and embraces truth, a 
last judgment passes upon that individual."^ 

Since Blake regards the mental as preferable 
to the moral Satan, "the great Selfhood" is not 
for him as for the orthodox theologian the sym- 
bol of active evil. He is rather passivity, dull- 
ness and cruel goodness. Note Blake's own 
characterization : 

"Satan making to himself laws from his own 
identity, 
Compelled others to serve him in moral 
gratitude and submission. 

Being called God ; setting himself above all 

that is called God.'"' 
The stings of Satan are "To do unkind 

things with kindness, with power armed 

to say, 
The most irritating things in the midst of 

tears and love."^ 



' Blake, "Prose Fragments," small ed., p. 255. 
* Blake, "Prose Fragments," small ed., p. 252. 
=' Blake, "Book of ?»Iilton," p. 9. 
' Blake, "Book of Milton," p. 10. 



45. 

Thus from Blake's point of view, the orthodox 
theologian who believes that merely refraining 
from acts called evil will ensure his entrance into 
Heaven, will find some time that his whole life- 
view has been wrong, and that he, like Peer 
Gynt, is fit to be cast into the ladle and made 
over.' It is in this spirit that Blake causes the 
elect and the redeemed to meet, and the elect to 
say : 

"We behold it is by Heavenly 

Election, that we live ; 

Our virtues and cruel goodnesses 

Have deserved Eternal Death."" 

Mere self-denial is thus not only ineffective, 
but wrong: 

"Men must be forgiven not only for 
Sin and indulgence. 
There must be forgiveness of virtue 
And abstinence."^ 
This extreme statement is almost repeated by 
Nietzsche, who says, "Forgive us our virtues, so 
should we pray to mankind."^ 

For Blake, the selfhood of men separates them 
as does the Hobbist ego, while the pursuit of in- 
dividuality, of mental activity will unite them. 
"The circle of individuality will widen out until 
other individualities are contained within it not a 
mind but all minds. "° Like Schopenhauer, Blake 
believes that the "principium individuationis"® is 
just an illusion of the senses, under the dominion 
of space and time, and that "man is adjoined to 
man by the spirit of freedom (Jerusalem), in 



' Ibsen, "Peer Gynt," Act V., p. 283. 
= Blake, "Book of Milton," p. 11. 
^ Swinburne, "Essay on Blake," p. 265. 
* Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human," p. 177. 
' Ellis and Yeats, "Work of Blake," Vol. I., p. 244. 
" Schopenhauer, "World As Will and Idea," p. 454- 
455. 



46. 

every individual man."^ With Paracelsus he would 

say, "He who tastes the crust of bread tastes all 
the stars and all the heavens."' "Pride of self- 
hood'" divides men, and to perceive his oneness 
with humanity he must pierce the veil of illusion 
which he calls "self.'' However great and glo- 
rious, however loving and merciful the individ- 
uality in selfhood, we are nothing."' To attain 
his own individuality man must recognize the in- 
dividuality of others which should remain for 
him inviolable. "Man must learn to distingugish 
the eternal human that walks about in bliss or 
woe."' This perception of unity can come only 
through wisdom and mental striving, when man 
receives "a new self-hood"" and enters into him- 
self "his real, immortal self.'" Blake here unites 
his individualism with a form of humanitarian- 
ism and intellectualism. The greatest humani- 
tarianism will mean the greatest individualism. 

As the restraint from evil and the pursuit of 
moral virtue or mere reason is useless for the de- 
velopment of individuality, so it is useless also as 
the price of entrance into Heaven. Intellectual 
life is necessary, and so Blake says, "There is no 
God than that God who is the Intellectual foun- 
tain of Humanity."* Since this is so, he adds : 
"I care not whether a man is good or evil ; all 
that I care is whether he is a wise man or a fool. 
Go put off holiness and put on intellect."" Since 
goodness is not the price of entrance into heaven, 
Blake declares that, "Men are admitted into 
heaven not because they have curbed their pas- 



' Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 44-45. 

-"Ellis and Yeats, Vol. I., p. 253. 

' Ibid, p. 45. 

° Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 49. 

* Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 52. 

'Blake, "Book of Milton," II., p. 14. 

*" Blake, "Jerusalem," p. 91, 

"Ibid, p. 91. 



s'.ons, but because they have cultivated their un- 
derstandings. The treasures of heaven are not 
negations of passion, but reaUties of intellect. 
. . . The fool shall not enter heaven be he ever 
so holy. Holiness is not the price of entrance 
into heaven. Those who are cast out are those 
who, having no passions of their own, because no 
intellect, have spent their lives in curbing and 
governing other people's by the various arts of 
poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The modern 
Church crucifies Christ with the head down- 
wards."' Blake in this denunciation of morality 
in favor of intelligence closely approximates to 
Bernard Shaw's view that "Heaven is the home 
of the masters of reality.'"' 

Blake, while immoralistic and irrationalistic, 
yet retains an element usually connected with ra- 
tionalism ; namely, intellectualism, but instead of 
connecting it with rationalism he connects it with 
individualism. We have seen that Art is, for 
him, the means to the attainment of individual- 
ism, and that this Art is to be a purely mental 
activity. It is also to be a warm vital energy. 
Blake thus seems to escape both the coldness of 
rationalism and the blindness of sense through 
this aesthetical intellectuality, which is the intui- 
tional rather than perceptual or conceptual. He 
is distinctly a preacher of the "third order of 
knowledge."* 

He himself says : 

"I know of no other gospel than the liberty both 
of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of 

imagination, the real and eternal world 

To labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem 
and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem 



' Blake, "Prose Fragments," small ed., p. 252. 
' Shaw, Bernard, "Alan and Superman," p. 103. 
' Spinoza, "Ethics," p. 87. 



48. 



Individualism: 
Blake and Stirner 



and her builders."* 

In the discussion of Blake's irrationalism and 
immoralism we found that he both anticipated, 
and, for the most part, excelled the nineteenth 
century irrationalists and immoralists from Stir- 
ner to Nietzsche. With these men also individ- 
ism was at once the cause and the effect of their 
immoralism and irrationalism. Their individual- 
ism is not always constructive, as with Blake. 
This we shall see as we examine their theories to 
compare them with the theory of Blake. 

Stirner's individualism is the core of his doc- 
trine. His rebellion was essentially a rebellion 
ag^ainst the idea of humanity, a humanity in 
which the individual should lose his personality. 
This personality is, to Stirner, the only thing 
worth having, and if he can reach it only through 
irrationalism and immoralism, why then he will 
be irrationalistic and immoralistic. "That I make 
myself and be, this alone, is reason, be I ever so 
irrational.'" "Nothing is more to me than my- 
self."' This ego of Stirner's while developed much 
more logically than in Ibsen or Nietzsche, is after 
all, only a negative self. Stirner states emphat- 
ically what the ego shall not be, to what he shall 
not yield, but he states in no definite way what 
the ego shall be. To say the ego is everything, is 
no more than to say it is nothing, unless the terms 
are defined. Here Stirner fails, at least, in great 
part. Blake, on the contrary, is always positive. 
While his individual is immoralistic and irration- 
alistic, he is also strong, vigorous, human, intel- 



* Blake, "Jerusalem," pp. 226, 227, small ed. 
'Stirner, "Ego and His Own," p. 461. 
" Ibid, p. 6. 



49 

lectual, not Hand only, or Heart, but Head as . 
well. He is the doer of intellectual deeds. Blake's 
idea of individuality thus transcends as well as 
anticipates that of Stirner. 

With the individualism of Emerson, Blake has Blake and Emerson 
more in common. Both are, as we have already 
said, sane philosophers, not rebels only. Both are 
constructive as well as destructive. Both have the 
ideal of strength. Both declaim against the 
obedience to merely external law, and argue that 
the only real worth must emanate frotn the indi- 
vidual not be imposed upon him. Neither Blake 
nor Stirner forget that individuality must be spir- 
itual, not merely empirical ; must be intellectual, 
not voluntaristic only. Both Blake and Emerson 
emphasize self-trust and scorn humility. We have 
already had Blake's view. Emerson says. "Trust 
thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."* 
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconform- 
ist."' "I do not wish to expatiate, but to live. My 
life is not an apology, but a life."'* 

Like Blake, Emerson cries that man has been 
left outside of himself. "Man is timid and apol- 
ogetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not 
say, 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or 
sage" . . . "I must be myself."'' By this Em- 
erson means, as Blake meant, not an empirical 
ego, not a selfish Peer Gynt, but a spiritual self, 
a personality. He believes, too, that most benev- 
olence fails because of this lack of personality. 
"There must be very two, before there can be 
very one."° We cannot give ourselves to others 
till we have a self to give. 



' Emerson, "Self-reliance," p. 31, 

"- Ibid, p. 23. 

Mhid, p. 34. 

* Emerson, "Self-reliance," p. 31 

° Emerson, "Self-reliance," p. 33 



50. 

In their individualism Blake and Emerson are 
thus much alike. Blake is, however, in spite of 
his obscure language, more consistently individ- 
ualistic. As he is stronger, more violent in his 
rebellion, so he is stronger, more positive in his 
individualism. This is, perhaps, because he is 
more thoroughly a mystic. Emerson felt that 
oneness, the spiritual unity that lies behind, that 
works through all things, but Blake liz^ed it. It 
was his world. 

With Ibsen, Blake has in common the struggle 
Individualism: for, the ideal of individuality. But beside Blake, 

Blake and Ibsen Ibsen's individualism dwindles down to a morbid 
rebellion against custom. 

He is so pessimistic, so gloomy ; his characters, 
especially the women, are so abnormal ; his men 
so subnormal. Yet he has, of course much true 
inividualism which does not neglect the unity of 
humanity, even while it spurns the usual inter- 
pretation of humanity. When Nora was told she 
must not forget she was a wife and a mother, she 
exclaimed, "I believe that before all else I am a 
human being !"^ "I must make up mind which is 
right, society or myself."^ And she awoke a tur- 
moil that has scarcely ceased to echo, a proof of 
the strength of the chain by which "law and 
order" have bound us. When Ibsen in Peer Gynt 
says : "To be one's self one must slay one's self,"* 
he does not, I think, refer to rigorism, but to the 
slaying of the selfish self (what Blake calls self- 
annihilation), in favor of the higher, spiritual 
self. He makes this clearer in Rosmersholm, and 
in When We Dead Azvaken. 



•Ibsen, "The Doll's House," p. 147. 

' Ibid, p. 149. 

' Ibsen, "Peer Gynt," p. 252. 



Individualism: 
Blake and Nietzsche 



51. 

Ibsen is, perhaps, the individualist who has 
come nearest to popularity. This partly because 
of his doctrine, partly because of its dramatic 
form ; but when one turns from Ibsen it is with a 
sense of gloom, of pessimism, of failure, that 
causes one to wish with Hilda Wangel "O', if one 
could only sleep it all away !'" This is, perhaps, 
the chief difference between his individualism, 
and the stern yet joyous individualism of Blake. 

Last of the great nineteenth-century individ- 
ualists v.'ho followed Blake, is Nietzsche. Let us 
see how his theory of individualism compares 
Vv^ith that of his predecessor. We have seen that 
Nietzsche's immoralism was more violent and less 
logical and coherent than that of Blake. In his 
Zarathiistra he develops the idea of the Super- 
man who shall be beyond good and evil. His 
superman is, however, intelligently selfish. He 
must have a plentitude of power. His happiness 
is to be found through the exercise of power, and 
he must do all to increase power. His pleasure 
alone determines good and evil. He must give 
"the highest affirmation to all that is questionable 
and strange in existence itself.'" Not good, not 
joy, not even intellect, but poiver must be the 
goal of the superman. 

In this ideal we shall see that Nietzsche dif- 
fers fundamentally from Blake, however much Contrast with Blake 
they appear, on the surface, to be alike. The in- 
dividual in Blake is to be beyond good and evil, 
but this does not depend upon his pleasure as 
with superman. It depends upon the purification 
of the spiritual self who shall finally come to see 
that with God all is good. 

' Ibsen, "Master Builder," p. 333. 

' Nietzsche, "Birth of Tragedy," p. 192. 



The Superman 



52. 

Moreover, while Blake and Nietzsche both be- 
believe in strength, in power, in Blake it is not 
selfish power. Though he believes that strong 
and weak cannot be justly governed by the same 
laws, yet he could never have advocated a class 
of superman who should exploit a slave-class for 
their own pleasure. He never excluded human- 
ity. We are all one in essence ; but it must be a 
humanity of individuals, not a humanity of non- 
entities. 

Lastly, Nietzsche's superman is not primarily 
intellectual. His goal is power, and while it must 
be intelligent power, still the will-to-power stands 
highest. Intelligence stands higher than the phy- 
sical or the moral, but it is still second. With 
Blake, it is different. Men must "cultivate their 
understandings." Intellectual labor is the only 
labor. It is "the building of Jerusalem." 
Through wisdom the self wins its freedom. One 
of the chief causes of our submission to moral 
law, to custom, to society, is our stupidity. With 
Nietzsche the superman breaks through these 
barriers, regardless of hurt to others. With 
Blake, the strong man transcends these barriers, 
drawing others with him. The superman de- 
stroys, the individual builds. 

CONCLUSION. 

Freedom, complete liberty for spiritual devel- 
opment through creative energy from the laws of 
reason, freedom from moral obligation, freedom 
from all laws except that of one's own eternal, 
spiritual being; this is the gospel of Blake. He 
is typical, not of the philosophers of his own 
country, but of the philosophical rebels of the 
nineteenth century. He is immoralistic, in the 
manner of Nietzsche in his reversal of the stand- 



53. 
arcls of good and evil. He is irrationalistic as is 
Stirner in his objection to the restraints of ana- 
lytic reason. Like Emerson, he believes in 
strength, and like Emerson he is constructive. 

Like Ibsen, Blake declaims against traditional 
theism w^ith its awe-inspiring, but ancient Jeho- 
vah and its rule of external authority. Like Ib- 
sen, too, he proclaims, not altruism versus ego- 
ism, but a heirarchy, in which the spiritual self is 
superimposed upon the physical. Like Bernard 
Shaw, Blake puts ordinary conduct within the 
sphere of time, and makes heaven the home of 
the intellect. 

Blake is thus essentially modern in form, and 
in thought, and he certainly lived as he wrote. 
For him Art zvas "the business of life, and the 
unseen was far more real than the world of Na- 
ture, the visible world. He might have said of 
himself as he made Milton say: 

"Mine to teach men to despise death, and to 
go on 
In fearless majesty annihilating self. 
Laughing to scorn thy laws and terrors 

I come to discover before Heaven and Hell 
thy self-righteousness 
In all its hypocritical turpitude ; 
These wonders of Satan's holiness. 
Showing to the earth the idol virtues of 
the natural heart."" 
Blake we see. may now be classed with Plato, 
v/ith Hegel, with Spinoza, as an intellectualist 
and visionary, though it be his visions have an 
element of truth, of beauty, and permanency 
wanting the philosophy of the voluntarist and 
realist, Blake with his disregard of the material, 
and his theory of reality as something spiritual, 

' Blake, "Book of Milton." 



54. 

satisfies the love of the human mind for sub- 
stance, for permanency beyond the permancy of 
facts. The emphasis which Blake places upon 
the free imaginative, creative intellect as the su- 
preme spiritual gift of men and its cultivation as 
the supreme work of mankind, not only places 
him high among the intellectualists who, like 
Aristotle, believe in the work of contemplation, 
but it satisfies the strong desire of the human 
spirit for culture, and for creation, for this crea- 
tion of the purely spiritual is man's peculiar gift, 
and his only after much striving and travail of 
soul. 

Lastly, Blake is the first philosopher to place 
selfhood upon a philosophical place, and to see 
that not by mere altruism or benevolence, or 
even by virtue could one be truly "man" creative 
and spiritual. He saw that this was to be done 
only by the cultivation of one's personality to the 
uttermost, through the mind, and the free im- 
agination. Thus he raised egoism from the crass 
form of the Hobbist ego, which had been de- 
fended or opposed for a century or more, to 
something high, something spiritual and real, to 
be striven after by all, but attained only by the 
master-minds of the world. 



m» 



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